A Marine Corps Officer Candidate Shares His Story and Preparation

Tag Archives: compete

This morning a staff sergeant came to my college to give the Physical Fitness Test (PFT) to 4 other candidates and myself. Three passed, two failed. I had the second highest score–passing of course! First Class PFT, check! 300 is a perfect score, 225 is a passing score. The PFT consists of three events:

First event: Pullups

I did 15 pullups, second most. One kid did 18! A perfect score (100 points) is 20. I could have done a few more, but inadvertently was pulling myself too high each time, making them a bit harder. Some guys didn’t know you can do it palms-in or out. I prefer out, personally. You have to get your chin to the bar, and I was getting my chest up, with my whole neck above the bar. It was a manly way to start the day, let me tell you–all 5 of us candidates were yelling and cheering on each guy to motivate whoever was doing the pullups at the time.

15 pullups: 75 points.

Second event: Crunches

After a minute to relax, the sergeant showed us how to do Marine Corps crunches. You can learn how to do them here: PFT Link. The staff sergeant said when he did them, he got 90 out of the 100 in his first 90 seconds. You get a full two minutes, and i’ve been working my abs alot so I wasn’t worried about scoring less than perfect.

100 crunches: 100 points.

Third event: Three mile run

Last was a three mile run, for most guys the hardest event. A perfect score is 18 minutes total! My first mile was at 6:20 pace, my second at a 6:00 pace, and half-way through my third one I started feeling very nauseated and got a terrible stitch in my side. I’ve never had a stitch like that before, it felt like i couldn’t breathe! So I stopped running, walked a bit, stopped, then I bent over and took some very deep breaths. It went away instantly and up I popped and kept going–I accidentally miscounted my laps so I ran two extra laps! The Staff Sergeant knew I had finished already but let me go. On these last two “bonus” laps, I sprinted very hard, then continued sprinting straight to the garbage can. I threw up a couple times from the exertion. To be honest, I was pretty proud of puking and it impressed the Marine who said, “That means you left 100% on the track.”